Encounters with Unsung Armenians
Jirair Tutunjian, Toronto, February 2013
In the 20th century, after the Bible and Shakespeare, the most
published books were that of British mystery writer Agatha Christie.
In the `20s and the `30s she took part, along with her archeologist
husband, in several expeditions to Syrian and Iraqi archeological
sites. The below excerpts are from her 1946 memoir `Come, Tell Me How
You Live’
`And then Aristide [Armenian], in his gentle, happy voice, with his
quite cheerful smile, tells the story. The story of a little boy of
seven, who with his family and Armenian families was thrown by the
Turks alive into a deep pit. Tar was poured on them and set alight.
His father and mother and two brothers and sister were all burnt
alive. But he, who was below them all, was still alive when the Turks
left, and he was found later by some of the Anaizah Arabs. They took
the little boy with them and adopted him into the Anaizah tribe. He
was brought up as an Arab, wandering with them over their pastures.
But when he was eighteen he went into Mosul and there demanded that
papers be given him to show his nationality. He was an Armenian, not
an Arab! Yet the blood brotherhood still holds, and to members of the
Anaizah he still is one of them.
`I am struck as often before by the fundamental difference of race.
Nothing could differ more widely than the attitude of our two
chauffeurs to money. Abdullah lets hardly a day pass without
clamouring for an advance of salary. If he had his way we would have
had the entire amount in advance, and it would, I rather image, have
been dissipated before a week was out. With Arab prodigality Abdullah
would have splashed it about in the coffee-house. He would have cut a
figure! He would have `made a reputation for himself.’
`Aristide, the Armenian, has displayed the greatest reluctance to have
penny for his salary paid him. `You will keep it for me, Khwaja, until
the journey is finished. If I want money for some little expense I
will come to you.’ So far he has demanded only fourpence of his
salary – to purchase a pair of socks!
[At the end of trip, in Beirut, when his British tourist customers ask
Aristide what he would do with the money he had earned while
chauffeuring], the Armenian driver says, `It will go towards buying a
better taxi.’
`And when you have a better taxi?’
`Then I shall earn more and have two taxis.’
I can quite easily foresee returning to Syria in twenty years’ time,
and finding, Aristide, the immensely rich owner of a large garage, and
probably living in a big house in Beirut. And even then, I dare say,
he will avoid shaving in the desert because it saves the price of a
razor blade.’
–From `A Surveying Trip’ by Agatha Christie in her `Come, Tell Me How
You Live’ memoir (1946)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In the early `30s famed British novelist, Evelyn Waugh, travelled to
Ethiopia to report on the coronation of its emperor. In Addis Ababa he
hired an Armenian interpreter. Upon his return, Waugh wrote a `Remote
People’ – a travel book about his trip. This is what he wrote about his
Armenian interpreter:
` And doubt I might have had about which to patronize was dissolved ,
as soon as we turned into the main street, by a stout little man in a
black skull-cap, who threw himself at my bridle and led me to the Leon
d’Or. During my brief visit I became genuinely attached to this man.
He was an Armenian of rare character, named Bergebedgian; he spoke a
queer kind of French with remarkable volubility, and I found great
delight in all his opinions; I do not think I have ever met a more
tolerant man; he had no prejudice or scruples of race, creed, or
morals of any kind whatever, there were in his mind none of those
opaque patches of inconsidered principles, it was a single translucent
pool of placid doubt; whatever splashes of precept and disturbed its
surface from time to time had left no ripple; reflections flitted to
and fro and left it unchanged.
`Everywhere he went he seemed to be welcome; everywhere he not only
adapted, but completely transformed, his manners to the environment.
When I came to consider the question I was surprised to realize that
the two most accomplished men I had met during this six months I was
abroad, the chauffeur who took us to Debra Lebanos and Mr.
Bergebedgian, should both have been Armenians. A race of rare
competence and the most delicate sensibility. They seem to me the only
genuine `men of the world’.’
`On the ship back to England, Waugh met a Turkish traveler. He told
the Turk about his experiences with the two Armenians in Ethiopia.
`The warmth of admiration for Armenians clearly shocks him, but he is
too polite to say so. Instead, he tells me of splendid tortures
inflicted on them by his relatives.’
http://www.keghart.com/Tutunjian-Unsung